Well they have no tonnage so cannot count towards critical locations so that is easy.

I don't see why a station would not be able to benefit from Aegis etc as those target ships which stations count as (kindda...I know...).

Command Cards are a little tricky without reading the wording on them but overall I don't see why not. One thing to remember is that they don't activate so that may make some cards useless for them.

I don't see why you couldn't target a friendly or enemy station with fighters. They can be targetted like ships so it makes sense they would effect launch assets the same. The real question is what happens when you launch bombers at x2 thrust at an enemy station? Since they don't activate the bombers will never trigger... My group plays it with their "activation" being their chance to fire and have the bombers attack after that.

Station changing hands mid BG activation is tricky and not at the same time. You have to resolve each group fully before moving to the next one so really the result would be no different than if the change occured between battle group activations. If a ship explodes next to a station and the collateral damage kills the tokens on the station which makes it change sides that effect will be imediate as far as I am concerned. Since you cannot target a station with friendly tokens (in theory not hard rules but supported by the way bombardment works) it is rare that this would happen. Also missing is how you distribute collateral damage to tokens on board a station with multiple sides onboard. I've been playing with you randomize it since it is not a controlled attack.

So yeah all in all there is some grey to space stations but using the rest of the rules as context its not too hard to work out a fair way to use them consistant with the rules as they are. I've had these questions (or close enough wording) in the Collected FAQ v2 for a couple months now, just waiting on Hawk to get around to making the next errata/faq document now.

BlackLegion wrote:Another thing that occurred to me: If you shoot and damage a station, do the tokens on board take hits too?

At the moment, no. Nor are there currently any rules preventing you from shooting a station with friendly troops on them. So you can't bombard a ground sector with friendlies, but you can volley on a station even if it's got your troops on board and even if the volley is likely to destroy the target. I've had some pretty entertaining Station Assault games where both sides were carefully upping the ante in terms of how many troops they'd put on a station, knowing that going too far would get the station blown to bits.

BlackLegion wrote:Another thing that occurred to me: If you shoot and damage a station, do the tokens on board take hits too?

It's actually kinda grey. I'm on the fence about it myself and have several people very vocal about them taking damage when the station does.

A space station is a sector for resolving combat. On page 56 it states that if a sector takes damage the ground assets take collateral damage. While it is under the bombardment section that section is still in ground combat which is where a space station counts as a sector.

I would argue the other side being that this is listed under bombardment and not normal ground combat and also that pg 58 list resolve combat as a step (so that is the only time a station is a sector...).

It's grey enough to be annoying as while my gut says the rules don't allow collateral damage it also makes sense that they would suffer from it.

Edit:

Was rereading the Beta Command Cards and hopefully someone with a real pack of UCM can confirm... The Card Infiltrate and Sabotage does damage to Sectors or Space Stations. It mentions rolling for collateral damage exactly as if the sector or space station took damage from a shooting attack.

For example there's a PHR card that gives a friendly ship a passive 4+ save for a round. If space stations with your troops on them count as friendly ships, you can play that card on it. What then happens if the station is fired upon and all of your tokens on the station die to collateral damage anyway? Does the station still have the card active on it even though it's no longer friendly?

Gavri3l wrote:I feel like command cards are where things can get especially murky,

For example there's a PHR card that gives a friendly ship a passive 4+ save for a round. If space stations with your troops on them count as friendly ships, you can play that card on it. What then happens if the station is fired upon and all of your tokens on the station die to collateral damage anyway? Does the station still have the card active on it even though it's no longer friendly?

I think if a command card were intended to target a space station, it would specify "Space Station". I do not think that you can infer that a card that targets a friendly ship could be used on a station that you are occupying. That goes beyond the meaning of Pg. 54.

I love my job (well, I love having a job), but a bad day of gaming beats a good day of work every time!

Reading over the Beta Command cards again I would tend to agree with J.D. Welch that command cards do tend to specify when they are targetting space stations.

That said pg54 really should explain what etc means. Putting that into the book is just begging for people to make wild assumptions about what does or does not fall under etc and there is no way to prove it one way or another. Even in this case the only reason I assume it needs to mention space station on the card is because all the other ones seems to but even that that is only because they are talking about sectors/clusters.

One thing pg 54 does state is that space stations can be targetted. Command Cards target ships...so again not clear as to if controlled space stations are friendly ships or just ships.

Space stations have a ton of grey areas right now and command cards are just making it worse.

Cry of the Wind wrote:Was rereading the Beta Command Cards and hopefully someone with a real pack of UCM can confirm...

Any way for you to share pictures/description/list of the cards? just wanted to look trough them and decide if I and my mates should buy them

Buy them. They will be used in every event you go to (almost...some odd exception may occur). They also add some more interesting things to think about in game. For the cost you get a lot more life into the game.